Being undefeated, as Ian Garry is, is quite an achievement if you’ve fought for a meaningful period in the UFC. After all, there are no walkovers in the promotion, no tomato cans. You will compete against fighters of roughly your caliber and if you beat them, you move on to tougher and higher-ranked opponents.

And the Irishman has been up to the task so far, beating every man that has entered the cage with him. Only one fighter has managed to get the best of him. In this article, we take a look at what happened in that fight and why he lost.

Ian Garry’s only amateur loss in MMA

Before he turned pro in 2019, Ian Garry had a short but very successful run in the Irish amateur circuit for a year. A nineteen-year-old Garry made his amateur debut against fellow Irishman Andrejs Laksa at the Clan Wars 30 card back in 2017. Two months later, he won the Cage Ring Championship welterweight title in his second amateur fight. On his way to a promising career, everything was going the Irishman’s way. But his third amateur fight would bring him the only loss in the sport of MMA.

‘The Future’ faced Romania-born Andreas Binder at the ‘Clan Wars 31’ card. Binder used his wrestling and strength to muscle and ragdoll Garry every time he got a hold of the Irishman. But ‘The Future’ used his world-class striking to good effect and gave Binder quite a bit of trouble on the feet.

At the end of the three rounds, Binder won a hard-fought split decision and Garry got the only blemish in his fighting career. Other than that, however, ‘The Future’ has been nothing short of stellar.

Ian Garry’s flawless professional MMA and UFC record

Garry went on to have four more amateur fights after the Binder fight, all of which he won, and turned pro in 2019. At the age of 21, he started his pro-MMA career in his then-idol Conor McGregor’s alma mater, Cage Warriors. In his first six pro fights, all of them at CW, ‘The Future’ had four finishes and a title.

This and his obvious talent got him into the UFC, where he impressed Dana White and Co. in five fights to be matched up against gatekeeper Neil Magny at UFC 292 in 2023. Then he won a split decision over the top-ranked veteran Geoff Neal in early 2024 and was matched up against the dynamic and exciting Michael ‘Venom’ Page on the latter’s UFC debut at UFC 303. Garry won another decision, this time a unanimous one over ‘MVP’, cementing him in the top ten of the division. Now, because of the other top-ranked guys either being injured or coming off losses, he finds himself one step from a title shot.

‘The Future’ is set to face fellow undefeated welterweight and the boogeyman of the division, Shavkat Rakhmonov at UFC 310 on December 8, with the winner almost virtually guaranteed to fight champ Belal Muhammad next. Which is why this is almost definitely the most important fight of Garry’s career so far with one man guaranteed to lose their ‘O’. What do you think about Ian Garry’s undefeated UFC career?